Absurd statement on rotation patterns

Noah Shactman of Wired is passing along with numerous comments the following statement from the US Army on the upside advantages of the new rotation pattern of fifteen months in combat and twelve months in garrison for active duty units. Read him as his comments are fun, but here is the key part of the article he is responding to:

Extended overseas deployments affecting soldiers serving in Afghanistan and other locales overseen by U.S. Central Command should help to alleviate the stress on the Army, a senior U.S. officer in Afghanistan told Pentagon reporters today.

“I’m absolutely confident that that’s going to work and that’ll manage the pressure and the stress on the force,” Army Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, said during a satellite-carried news conference.

All active U.S. Army units already operating within U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, including Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, or en route there “will deploy for not more than 15 months and return home for not less than 12 months,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced April 11 at a Pentagon news conference

This is an absurd statement on its face --- increasing deployment times, decreasing dwell times, decreasing training and integration time for new individuals all the while operating without any thing that vaguely resembles a strategic reserve --- and it is a statement that should not be made in accordance with my previous post. This statement does nothing except further the impression that the Army has Hooyaahhed itself so hard that its head is up its ass.